Alim’s Story By China Aid Association
Alimujiang Yimiti is a Uyghur Christian who converted from Islam in 1995. He and his wife, Gulinuer, led a house church ministry in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, spreading a message of hope and peace in a region with a long history of ethnic conflict and violence. Targeted for his minority faith and ethnicity, Alimujiang has been persecuted and unjustly treated in what his lawyer Dr. Li Baiguang has called “the worst case of religious persecution in the past decade.”
In 2002, Alimujiang began working as the Kashgar District Branch Project Manager of the Xinjiang Jiaerhao Foodstuff Co. Ltd., a company owned and established by the British company Jirehouse in 2000. He was responsible for the company’s orchard in Shule County.
On September 13, 2007, the Kashgar Municipal Commission of Ethnic and Religious Affairs accused Alimujiang of “engaging in illegal religious infiltration activities in Kashgar, spreading Christianity among the Uyghurs and distributing religious propaganda materials to increase the number of Christians.” However, there was no resolution to the Commission’s investigation, and he was never formally charged.
On November 19, 2007, another Uyghur Christian and a friend of Alimujiang, Mr. Wusiman Yiming, was detained by the Hotan Branch of the State Security Bureau on suspicion of assisting foreigners in illegal activities and leaking state secrets. Wusiman was arbitrarily sentenced, with no trial, on November 27, 2007, to two years re-education through labor. His arrest and sentence were motivated by the same religious prejudices targeting Alimujiang Yimiti.
Before his arrest, Wusiman had worked for a trading company in Yiwu city, in coastal Zhejiang province. In July 2007, he was ordered to return to his hometown in Xinjiang and was placed under house arrest. Wusiman was released on November 18, 2009 as scheduled, after suffering two years in the labor camp system, persecuted simply for his Christian faith.
Just months after Wusiman’s detention, authorities on January 12, 2008 seized Alimujiang from his home and criminally detained him for “inciting separatism” and “unlawfully providing state secrets to overseas organization.” On February 20, he was formally arrested on the same charges. Alimujiang’s first attorney, Mr. Zhang Kai of the Beijing Yijia Law Firm, traveled to Kashgar on February 25 to represent him in court, but was barred by the local government for “national security reasons.”
On April 18, 2008, lawyer Liang Xiaojun was finally able to meet with Alimujiang in the Kashgar Detention Center. Alimujiang told his lawyer that the charges were absurd and that his interrogations had all focused on his religious faith.
The Xinjiang courts sought to conceal Alimujiang’s case by trying him in secret on May 27, 2008. Alimujiang’s’s wife, mother, and children were barred from attending; only Alimujiang’s lawyers, Mr. Liang Xiaojun of Beijing Daoheng Law Firm and Mr. Li Dunyong of Beijing Gongxin Law Firm, were allowed to attend. When the court could not find enough credible evidence to convict Alimujiang of divulging state secrets, it declared there was “insufficient evidence” and said the case would be returned to the Kashgar police for further investigation.
The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention learned of Alimujiang’s case through the efforts of ChinaAid and Alimujiang’s lawyers. On September 12, 2008, they issued a formal Opinion (No. 29/2008), declaring that Alimujiang’s detention was not only arbitrary, but also based solely on his “religious faith and religious activities.” It stated that his detention violated Articles 7, 9, 10, 11 (1), 12 and 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Still the Chinese government did not respond.
Alimujiang’s wife and mother became concerned for Alimujiang’s safety and life when they learned that he had been rushed to a hospital on March 31, 2009. Witnesses who saw Alimjiang being brought Kashgar Nongsanshi Hospital said he shouted to onlookers that he had been severely beaten in the detention center. The authorities denied this, telling the family and lawyers he had been admitted for a “routine physical examination.” The family’s worst fears were confirmed when Alimujiang’s lawyer, Li Dunyong, was finally allowed to visit him on April 21. Li asked Alimujiang about the hospitalization, but Alimujiang replied that he was not allowed to discuss this.
After more than a year in detention with no formal verdict in his case, Alimujiang faced a grave and uncertain future. On July 11, 2009, the Kashgar District Procuratorate charged Alimujiang with the crime of “unlawfully providing state secrets to overseas organizations.” The separatism charge was dropped without explanation.
On July 28, the Kashgar Intermediate People’s Court conducted a second closed-door trial, once again barring Alimujiang’s wife and mother from attending. Lawyers Liang Xiaojun and Li Dunyong appeared in court in Alimujiang’s defense. At the end of the day, the court failed to announce a verdict, leaving his case unresolved.
Finally, on August 6, 2009, the Kashgar Intermediate People’s Court secretly sentenced Alimujiang to a 15-year prison term for the crime of “unlawfully providing state secrets to overseas organizations.”
However, it was not until October 27, more than two months later, that the court told Alimujiang’s wife and his lawyer, Li Dunyong, that it had already informed Alimujiang in the detention center of the verdict and that an official copy of the verdict had been mailed to Li Dunyong in Beijing. The court, however, refused to tell Gulinuer and Li Dunyong what the verdict was. They later learned that the verdict notification had never been mailed. It was not until December 7, nearly six months after Alimujiang’s secret second trial and only when Li Dunyong had traveled to Kashgar, that he learned that Alimujiang had been given the maximum sentence of 15 years.
Despite the disheartening news of this harsh sentence, Alimujiang’s lawyers and family refused to give up hope. Lawyer Zhang Kai had testified in October about Alimujiang’s case to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission on the United States. On December 9, Zhang Kai joined other prominent human rights lawyers in a landmark meeting with U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman in Beijing, and spoke specifically about Alimujiang’s case, calling for greater international pressure from the United States and other international leaders. ChinaAid president Bob Fu and others continued to raise awareness of Alimujiang’s case, trying to rally support for Alimujiang’s appeal.
In January 2010, lawyer Li Baiguang joined Alimujiang’s legal team to handle the appeal. On January 7, Dr. Li sent letters of appeal to the Xinjiang autonomous region government and the central government and petitions to all levels of the district and regional courts in Xinjiang.
To raise awareness for her husband, Gulinuer bravely recorded a video petition on January 18, urging the international community to pray for Alimujiang’s release. After more than two years of separation and secrecy, she appealed to the authorities to allow her and their sons, then aged 4 and 10, to visit Alimujiang in prison.
Then on March 16, the Xinjiang Intermediate Court dealt another devastating blow: they rejected Alimujiang’s appeal, saying the original verdict and sentence were “correct” and deeming the questionable evidence to be valid. Outraged by the injustice, Dr. Li and ChinaAid prepared to launch a broader campaign, to bring Alimujiang’s case to the world.
Throughout the month of March, Bob Fu joined Dr. Li in campaigning for Alimujiang in Europe, meeting with high-ranking European officials and international religious leaders. Upon his return to China, Dr. Li was barred from meeting with his client, Alimujiang, and was forced to go from one government office to another seeking permission to see his own client, all to no avail.
Alimujiang’s mother and his wife meanwhile were ceaselessly petitioning police officers, government officials, and state agencies. But the police refused to see or listen to them. His mother would travel miles from her hometown to stand at the gates of Alimujiang’s detention center, crying aloud for his release, before guards could force her to leave.
On April 12, Gulinuer was notified by phone that Alimujiang had been transferred from the Kashgar detention center to the No. 3 Prison in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi, nearly 1,500 kilometers (more than 900 miles) away from his hometown of Kashgar.
Miraculously, on April 20, thanks to years of legal advocacy and international pressure, Alimujiang was allowed to meet for the first time in more than two years with his wife, children, mother, and sister for a brief 15-minute conversation. Wushueran encouraged her son to be strong, and Alimujiang in turn comforted his family, not knowing when he would see them again.
In November 2010, the Higher People’s Court of Xinjiang accepted the appeal filed by Alimujiang’s wife and his mother and decided to re-try Alimujiang’s case. As requested by Alimujiang’s family, Gongxin Law Firm of Beijing, which had been representing Alimujiang almost from the beginning, sent its lawyers, who arrived in Urumqi on November 17.
After Christmas of 2010, the Higher People’s Court of Xinjiang told Gulinuer that a collegial bench earlier in December had already made a decision.
In February 2011, the Higher People’s Court of Xinjiang notified Alimujiang, who was serving his sentence, that it upheld his original sentence of 15 years imprisonment.
(China Aid Association) More info: www.FreeAlim.com
Case of Alimujiang Yimiti
